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82
EARLY WRITINGS

while the other one's mind or fluids are completely changed and combined, so all that is necessary is to give direction and locate the disease in any part of the body.

I think I hear you say that a child can be troubled with scrofula, and they have no mind; then they have no body or fluids; for the fluids are the mind, as I said before. Your mother probably changed the fluids of your body, when an infant or at any early age, and some circumstance located it in your leg. Now as it is there you want to know how to get rid of it, and as it was directed there through ignorance you can't get rid of it without some knowledge.

Now as this disturbance comes like a fright or sensation, it is to be understood as a fright. Now as disease is looked upon as a thing independent of the mind, the mind is disturbed by every sensation produced upon the senses, and the soul stands apart from the disturbed part and grieves over it, as a person grieves over any trouble independent of the body. Now to cure you, you must come with me to where the trouble is, and you will find it to be nothing but a little heated fluid just under the skin, and it is kept hot and disturbed by your mind being misrepresented.[1]

Now I believe that I can impart something from my mind that can enter into that distressed state of the fluids and change the heat and bring about a healthy state. I shall often try to produce a cooling sensation on your limb, at other times a perspiration so as to throw off the surplus heat. If I succeed in helping or relieving you, please let me know. But do not expect another explanation. . . . If you think you would improve faster by coming to Belfast, please let me know, and I will get you a private boarding house, if desired. I think I can hear you say by this time that your limb feels better, if so I shall be satisfied.

MR. QUIMBY'S METHOD

It may be somewhat strange to you to hear something of the mode of curing disease by a person who does not believe in any disease independent of the mind.[2] I am acquainted with a person who does not give any medicine at all, and yet he is in the constant practice of curing persons afflicted with all

  1. That is, in bondage to error. The sensation of heat under the skin has been misinterpreted.
  2. Dr. Quimby here speaks of himself in the third person.